The aviation training center, due to be opened in 2015, will train cockpit crews, engineers and technologists

MOSCOW, December 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation and the Boeing Company have signed an agreement on setting up an aviation training center and an R&D Center. The document was signed Wednesday at a ceremony that was attended by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

In addition, the Skolkovo Foundation signed an agreement with Schneider Electric company on setting up an R&D Center in the Skolkovo technology city near Moscow.

Boeing also signed an agreement of the Promyshlennye Investory (Industrial Investors) group on supplies of training equipment. The latter Russian group, in its turn, signed a contract with Tranzas group on the supplies of simulators.

The aviation training center, due to be opened in 2015, will train cockpit crews, engineers and technologists, as well as design and develop innovative technologies for training and original Russian simulators.

Promyshlennye Investory group, the main investor in the project, is expected to invest 1.5 billion rubles ($45.8 million). Tranzas Company will supervise the production of top-notch simulators on the basis of original Russian IT.

At the time of opening, Boeing’s training center at Skolkovo will have four simulator compounds.

“Boeing Company’s own instructors will teach at the Skolkovo school,” a spokesman for the foundation said.

Sergei Zhukov, the Skolkovo research cluster’s executive director for space technologies and telecommunications said the school would train pilots for the Boeing jets for various airlines, including the two major carriers, Aeroflot and Transaero.

“In the future, however, the simulators will be ramified enough to offer training for jets of other types,” Zhukov said.

The Boeing training center at Skolkovo will be located in a separate building that will have an overall floor space of about 5,000 sq m.

As for the research center, it will implement the programs related to novel materials, digital technologies, hydrodynamics, a number of other areas, Zhukov said.